Lessons should be learnt from Mma Ramotswe exit

| Thursday June 3, 2010 00:00

The filmmakers were here with the assistance of the Ministry of Wildlife and Tourism, which had given the production a sum of P31 million (US$5 million).  Minister Kitso Mokaila touted the production as an advicate of Botswana's image abroad.

He seemed to have funded the production solely on the basis of the ministry's interest in a public relations exercise.

In other words, whatever local film professionals wanted to get out of the movie would be nothing but slim pickings spilling over from the government public relations excercise.

When the Mma Ramotswe crew came here amidst fanfare, we warned that the approach was flawed, and that Botswana would not draw any long-lasting benefit from this exercise.

P31 million is a lot of money and we believed that it could have been spent better.

Mokaila was ill-equipped to deal with matters relating to film production or any visual arts endeavour, thus it was not his fault that he only saw the production as an exercise in public relations.

However, the production should have been invited by a different ministry altogether, perhaps the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture.

Filmmaking is a creative cultural endeavour, so that mandate should have fallen under the ministry of culture.The ministry continues to abrogate its responsibility over the film arts, and the filmmakers seem to view themselves in turn as some type of technological wizards who belong to the ministry of technology.

That is a side issue for now. The point is that under the ministry of culture, there should be a film commission whose primary purpose would be to energise and direct the film and video industry.

The film commission would be only a minor cog in the machinery of our national film and video production industry, but it would be a major player. The film commission would liaise between foreign productions and local filmmakers to make sure that skills transfer becomes a reality.

It would assist in establishing the infrastructure - human, legal and physical - for the film industry to flourish. The Mma Ramotswe film crew flew into a state of chaos. Mokaila only wanted to have the movie made and publicised. 

He was not interested in establishing a viable film industry. The filmmakers, on the other hand, were interested in longer term gains. Only interested in tourism, it was only a matter of time before Mokaila got bored with the whole thing.

When the filmmakers were done with their initial movie they sought to have yet more incentives to stick around and produce a TV series. There was no one in sight. No legal framework to work within. No infrastructure to speak of. Thus the filmmakers had to cross the border into South Africa where all these are existent.

At the end of the day that P31 million was a waste of resources looking at the ineptitude with which government handled the whole saga.

                                                   Today's thought

                   'The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.'

                                                 - Elbert Hubbard